Gay slave owners
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Male slave owners used sexual assault to lead, dehumanize, and emasculate male slaves in American Antebellum South. The oppression and violence that characterized the institution of chattel slavery are easily accessible, as well as the sexual assault often inflicted on female slaves. Although many slave narratives and journals address female rape and other forms of sexual assault, the abuse endured by male slaves has been grossly overlooked. The intention of this sheet is not to discredit the suffering of female slaves, but the explore suggested that the equal use of sexual assault as a form of discipline and control was applied to male slaves. There is a general consensus that only women were subjected to the violently lustful assaults of slave owners. A closer analysis of the narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Frederick Douglas revealed the underlying issue that male slaves were going through similar situations. All of this was an attempt to multiply American wealth through the forced labor of an entire race.
A long grey beard, a pair of piercing owl-like eyes and grand bare feet, mark "Prophet" Kemp among the citizenry of Daytona Beach, Florida. The "Prophet", christened John Henry- as nearly as he can remember- is an 80 year vintage ex-slave whose remininiscences of the past, delight all those who can prevail upon him to speak of his early animation on the plantation of the section.
" Prophet" Kemp does not speak only of the past, however, his conversation turns to the future; he believes himself to be equally competent to chat of the future, and talks more of the latter if permitted.
Oketibbeha County, Mississippi was the birthplace of the "Prophet". The first master he can remember was John Gay, owner of a plantation of some 2,700 acres and over 100 slaves and a heavy drinker. The "Prophet" calls Gay "fahter", and becomes very vague when asked if this title is a blood tie or a name of which he is generally known.
According to Kemp- Gay was one of the meanest plantation owners in the entire section, and frequently voices his pride in being fit to employ the cruelest overseers that could be found in all Mississippi. Among
Writing Gay History
Labor union activists in New York City attended the Jefferson School of Social Science, which was founded by the Communist party to educate the working class about the principles of Marxism. There, historians who had been blacklisted from the academy taught working-class adults about the history of slavery. They used evidence of slave rebellions to illustrate the power of an oppressed population to revolt against those in influence. One of the students in the class, Bernard Katz, rushed home to tell his two sons, Jonathan and William, over dinner about the heroic stories of black resistance.
For the Katz family, stories about slavery offered an historical explanation for the racial injustices that were exploding on the streets outside of their house. The history of dark resistance then led the Katz family to investigate and publish books that highlighted this history. In response to the uprising in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in the summer of 1965, William Katz published Eyewitness: A Living Documentary of the African American Contribution to American History, which was an anthology of testimonies by iconic African Americans from Harriet Tubman to
Sexual Violence and the Enslaved
Plantation Violence
As it was elsewhere, sexual violence was a ubiquitous component of enslavement throughout the history of slavery in Virginia. Enslavers exercised almost complete governance over the bodies of enslaved individuals and the conditions of their life, providing themselves with numerous avenues for force and coercion in the intimate lives of the enslaved. The plantation culture itself, with its strict hierarchy of white male command, emboldened enslavers to demean and dominate those over which they held control. And the law provided enslaved people with no protection from sexual force. The rape of an enslaved woman was not a crime under most state laws. In George v. State, the Supreme Court of Mississippi governed in 1859 that a Black enslaved man could not be convicted of raping an enslaved gal because it was only a crime to “commit a rape upon a white woman.”
Because of this absence of legal protection, historians lack an archive of legal cases to determine the extent of sexual violence against the enslaved and must rely on other evidence. For enslaved women in particular, slave narratives speak to the ubiquity and co
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